Before we look at the diet of ostriches, let's find out what they generally eat in nature. We want to note right away that these birds are unique and have a special structure of the digestive system. By the way, it differs from those possessed by poultry. Firstly, ostriches do not have a goiter, which means that they digest coarser food faster.

This provides a powerful stomach. Also for them digestive tract characteristic elongated hindgut. This allows the bird to receive the maximum amount of fiber and well cleanse the microflora from coarse plant fibers.

Most experts call ostriches herbivores, although in fact they can easily be classified as omnivores. They perfectly eat plant and animal food. With an abundance of green fodder, the basis of nutrition is grass, leaves of shrubs, seeds and roots of some plants. African birds are also not averse to feasting on small insects and even reptiles.

In natural habitat

If you have already read our previous publications, you probably already know what is in the African savannas. There, on long plains, they graze along with other herbivores on fresh greens, and also collect leaves of young shoots. Basically, in natural conditions, these birds feed on pasture, that is, grass.

Since ostriches can live without water for a long time, they often choose semi-arid deserts for nesting. There they find various seeds, roots and branches of shrubs for food. In the absence of abundant greenery, birds also prey on small insects, reptiles and even rodents. During the day, an adult in nature eats about 4 kilograms of food. This is the amount they need for a long run and a strong expenditure of energy.

At home

In principle, at home, ostriches eat everything the same as in nature. True, in such cases they eat less, because they do not need such big expense energy. The basis of their diet is greens: grass and leaves. In winter, they are also given hay, various concentrated feeds and cereals. Today, at home, ostriches include cabbage leaves, beets, give root crops, for example, beets and carrots, birds eat apples and zucchini well. Often they are also given scraps from the table.

The diet of ostriches

At home, their nutrition is given great attention. So, for example, with normal food, young animals grow and develop well, females increase productivity. Today the best food for African birds throughout the year is alfalfa. In winter, it is given in the form of hay, in summer - fresh with the addition of compound feed. They give at the rate of 1.5 kilograms per adult.

Allocate intensive, semi-intensive, normalized and extensive feeding system. Alfalfa, grass and compound feed form the basis of the latter type of feeding. With intensive or semi-intensive, grains, legumes, mineral and vitamin feeds are added to the greens. Their number depends on the productivity of the bird.

It is worth noting that these ostrich feeding programs are still very conditional and developed on the principle of analogy with other poultry. But, as practice shows, there is a place of its existence. However, you should definitely take into account the place of residence of the African bird, its living conditions, use, age and weight.

IN summer time Most of the time, ostriches should spend on pasture, on pasture. Once a day, they add 1.5 kilograms of compound feed to special feeders. If the bird needs proteins, it is given lupins, soybeans, meal and cake. Amino acids are added for their better assimilation. For growing young animals, it is necessary to add additionally to the feed minerals. These are, for example, chalk, bone meal, eggshell, crushed shell. You can also give bran.

As vitamin supplements, especially in winter, ostriches are recommended to give grass flour, alfalfa hay, and silage. Let's take a closer look at all the feeds:

• green - grass, leaves, vegetables;
• cereals - oats, barley, soybeans, corn;
• protein feed - cake, meal, bone meal, baker's yeast;
• hay - alfalfa, forbs, soybeans, silage;

It is important to feed the birds in correct presentation. For example, grain should be given in the form of turf, proteins in the form of flour, vegetables and root crops should be thoroughly chopped. In separate feeders, ostriches should be filled with small pebbles or gravel. For ostriches, there is a different diet, they do not even begin to feed them immediately, but only 6-8 days after hatching. But read about it in our next publications.

Video "Ostriches on the farm"

In this video you will learn not only how to feed ostriches, but also general rules keeping these birds. What they eat and what kind of diet they have, one of the private breeders will tell.

The largest bird in the world is the ostrich. Breeding ostriches in home farms brings tangible income with proper care for them. After 5-6 months, 40 kg of delicious dietary meat can be obtained from one individual. All parts of the bird are on sale: skin, claws, feathers, meat, eggs and shells of empty eggs for making souvenirs.

For breeding at home, African ostriches are considered the best. This family of birds is not as aggressive as their relatives from America and Australia. Birds grow 2.5 meters in height and weigh an average of 150 kg. They run quite fast, developing a speed of 50 km / h.

A novice farmer copes with the task of breeding this bird if he knows and takes into account the intricacies of care and feeding. When calculating costly resources for one ostrich, the consumption is less than for, and the profit is several times greater.

Before acquiring a bird, a fodder base, a paddock, rooms for young animals and winter keeping are prepared. If necessary, incubators for and heating devices are purchased for their warming.

paddock

The corral is built high and strong, because the bird is large, strong (in nature, in case of danger, an ostrich pierces the chest of a predator with a paw strike).

The height of the corral is built 2-2.5 meters, the birds are able to jump 3 meters in height. Grazing is spacious, ostriches prefer large areas of walking and pasture.

The territory is sown with forbs; in a dry summer, an additional canopy with feeders is placed to lay green grass and rest from the hot sun. All garbage is removed under the feet of the bird so that the ostriches do not swallow it. Clean water tanks are installed.

Requirements for the premises

A room for young animals and winter maintenance is being built spacious with a calculation of 10 m² for one individual with access to the south. Windows are located under the ceiling.

There should be no drafts in the room, the bird is sensitive to their influence. The walls are insulated, ventilation is installed for ventilation. The room is cleaned thoroughly every day. For chicks, the room is arranged separately from the adult livestock, heating devices are installed in protective strong shades. The air temperature is maintained +30°.

The size of the enclosure depends on the number of ostriches (about 5 m² per chick). Young animals grow very quickly, a centimeter a day, so the size of the enclosure is calculated immediately. After the chicks reach 4 months of age, they are released into a corral, which was built at the rate of 10 m² per head.

Description of the experience of keeping ostriches by Canadian farmers allows you to create a farm in middle lane Russia. For birds, a room is arranged with a wooden floor on a litter, where the bird's feet will not freeze. Young growth up to 5 months is not released into the street in winter, the air temperature is maintained in the room from +16 ° С.

The minimum area for one chick is 2.5 m², if it is less, then the chicks begin to pull out feathers from each other. For adults, space is important. In winter, they are let out for a walk under the supervision of workers.

The feathered family consists of three or four females and one male. The female herself takes care of the chicks in the equipped premises. The initial weight of the baby is 1 kg, he starts eating from the third day. After that, the chicks are released into the paddock for walking and feeding. The air temperature is maintained from + 18 °C. If the weather is warm outside, not lower than the indicator, the young are released into the street.

Feeding systems

The quality of meat and the yield of eggs depend on a properly composed diet. The diet includes: vitamins, proteins and minerals, succulent feed, grass and hay. An adult eats about 5 kg of food per day - it is important that this food is balanced. The mash consists of chopped herbs, feed additives based on corn, bone meal.

Chopped succulent feeds are also added: fodder beets, carrots, cabbage, zucchini, watermelons, fruits. If food remains in the feeder after feeding, its weight must be reduced, the energy consumption of the bird kept indoors is less than in natural conditions.

Important! Can be purchased ready-made specialized store. But if the farmer has land plot everything is grown on it. Only complex vitamin and mineral supplements are bought.

Feed is delivered to the feeders in the form of mashers twice a day. Mature chicks are divided by sex. Additives are added to the feed for females, which contain calcium, which helps to strengthen the shell on the eggs.

Males are not fed complementary foods with calcium. - this affects the quality of future offspring. In some feeders there are small pebbles or pebbles, they contribute to the digestion of food when swallowed.

Wet mash for small chicks consists of concentrated food with the addition of alfalfa leaves (stem is better not to give). The stirrer is supplemented with boiled chicken eggs, carrots, apples. In separate feeders, a large river sand with shell, fine gravel, shell chicken eggs. Vitamin B is added to the water at the rate of 5 grams per head.

Feed is calculated by weight per number of birds. Up to four months, babies should not have fiber in the feed (it is found in large quantities in straw, hay). You should not overfeed the younger generation - this leads to the accumulation of fat, which is reflected in females on egg production and egg quality, and in males - on the ability to fertilize.

After the young animals reach the age of three months, they are divided into two groups: one for replenishing the breeding herd, the other for fattening.

For the fattening group, an intensive fattening method for 6 months is used for rapid weight gain. During this period, an individual gains weight of about 120 kg, which is the maximum for obtaining high-quality products. Further maintenance of an adult bird is impractical - it will gain weight, but the quality of dietary meat is reduced.

Do not forget about the drinking regimen of the bird. Water containers are washed, fresh water is poured at each feeding.

What do ostriches eat: food in winter

In winter, ostriches prepare mash, which consists of: chopped hay, juicy vegetables and fruits. Vitamins, minerals, bone meal, cereal seeds, fish meal, soybean oil are added to the mash.

Feeding in winter will require less food: the bird spends more time in a warm room, its energy consumption is minimal. One head of a bird needs about three kilograms of feed.

What should not be fed to ostriches?

Ostriches are considered omnivorous wild nature they can eat small animals: lizards, mice, turtles. At home, there should be no rodents in the room for keeping ostriches.

The food is always delivered fresh, after eating the leftovers are removed to prevent souring and mold. Rye grains should not be mixed into the mixers. Do not feed ostriches with potatoes and parsley grass. Bran in mash should be 10% by weight.

Conclusion

Breeding feathered birds on home farms - profitable business. Material costs for the construction of fences, premises, the purchase of complex feed additives quickly pay off by selling products obtained from birds.

A balanced diet allows you to grow and replenish breeding herd no loss. Do not forget about the vaccination of birds - this is very important.

There are more and more farms that breed large African ostriches. Huge birds live, with exotic meat and large delicious eggs and in private farms. Before you get ostriches, you need to know what they eat: their usual diet, which directly depends on the structure of the body and the features that distinguish their digestive system.

The ostrich is an exotic bird and needs a special diet

How the structure of a bird affects its diet

Ostriches have a special digestive system - differently than any poultry.

1. They do not have a goiter, so they are able to digest roughage quickly, which explains the appearance of the following differences.
2. Having a strong stomach.
3. The elongation of the back of the intestine, due to which the birds receive a large amount of fiber and remove a lot of coarse plant fibers from the microflora.

Many experts are convinced that the ostrich is a herbivore and only eats grass, but this is not true. They are omnivorous birds, equally consuming a variety of plant and animal feed. If the birds see that there is a lot of green food, then they feed mainly on herbs, leaves, seeds, roots.

They become a delicacy small insects They also eat reptiles.

Ostriches pick up from the ground and eat whatever they like

Ostriches in their natural habitat

The habitat of large birds is the African savanna with its long plains, where there is a lot of fresh greenery and leaves of young shoots, which are excellent food for ostriches. Many different herbivores graze there. The diet of ostriches in the wild is pasture.

Due to the ability to do without drinking for a long time, birds often nest in semi-arid desert areas where they feed different seeds, roots and branches growing on shrubs.

The scarce greenery is replaced by small insects, reptiles and rodents. An adult ostrich needs to eat up to 4 kg of food per day in order to be able to run for a long time and expend a large amount of energy.

A wild ostrich eats 4 kg of food per day

The diet of ostriches living on a farm or in a private household

IN winter time their diet consists of hay, to which various concentrated feeds and cereals are added. The owners give the birds cabbage leaves, beet tops, diversify the diet with root crops - beets and carrots, apples and zucchini. Picky birds eat table waste.

Beet tops are suitable for feeding ostriches

Tips for farmers and private traders involved in breeding ostriches

For breeding ostriches, you need to pay a lot of attention to feed. Providing young birds with a normal diet, you can be sure of their good growth and proper development, as well as the productivity of females. It is best to feed the African giants with alfalfa, which is served to them in the form of hay in the winter, and fresh, with compound feed in the summer months. One adult is given one and a half kilograms per day.

There are several feeding systems

1. Intensive, in which the greens are supplemented with cereals and legumes, mineral and vitamin feed in quantities that are associated with the productivity of birds.
2. Semi intense.
3. Normalized.
4. Extensive, the basis of which is the nutrition of alfalfa, grass and feed that the ostrich eats.

The methods described above are conditional. They were developed, taking into account the principle of analogy with other types of poultry. It also takes into account:

• Location of a farm or private household.
• Conditions for keeping birds.
• How they are used.
• What age have you reached.
• How much do they weigh.

The diet of an ostrich depends on the climatic zone in which the farm is located.

Feeding ostriches at home

In summer

Birds spend most of their time on pastures, eating pasture. Every day they must eat from special feeders one and a half kilograms of compound feed. To replenish proteins in the body, birds are supplemented by adding lupine, soybeans, meal and cake to the feed, which are better absorbed along with amino acids consumed in the form of crushed chalk and shells, bone meal, egg shells, bran.

In the autumn-winter period

Vitamin supplements are needed, included in the winter diet of poultry, which are grass meal, alfalfa hay and silage.

Included in bird feed

• Green fodder, consisting of grass, leaves and vegetables.
• Cereals - oats, barley, soybeans, corn cobs.
• Protein feed contained in cake, meal, bone meal, baker's yeast.
• Seine - dried alfalfa, forbs, soybeans, silage.

Soy is an important part of the ostrich diet

What you need to know about feeding ostriches

The main condition rapid growth and good productivity of birds is rational feeding:

• Cereals are served in the form of derti.
• The bird eats squirrels in a carefully crushed state - flour with vegetables and root crops.
• Small pebbles and gravel are poured into a separate feeder.
• Drinking water must be clean and fresh.

An ostrich should receive nutrition that can improve its health, increase fattening speed, and increase productivity.

Features of feeding chicks

With improper distribution of feeding, ostriches can grow up with disproportionate limbs, becoming crooked and unable to fully live. On the first walk, the chicks are allowed to drink water and food, which is a mixture of small, crushed up to 1 cm, pieces of alfalfa or clover leaves, and protein feed.

In order for the body to receive protein, chickens are added to the diet of cottage cheese with a boiled egg.

For chicks 1-3 months old, 12% fiber and 18% protein are added to the feed. In addition to these additives, the chick nibbles green grass in warm time years and eats flour with silage in autumn-winter period. For good digestion, small stones are needed to help grind food. Three-week-old babies should be given stones to eat so that they do not die by eating tough greens.

Breeding ostriches today is no surprise to anyone, this is a profitable business and the ranks of poultry businessmen are replenished. In principle, the maintenance of an exotic bird does not differ from the care of familiar geese or ducks, but it also has its own characteristics. We will talk about the intricacies of feeding an African guest in this article.

How the structure of the digestive system affects the diet of ostriches

The digestive system of birds corresponds to the way and conditions of life in arid savannahs and prairies. Unlike other poultry, ostriches do not have goiter. Food enters the esophagus through the esophagus, where it is softened by the liquid secreted from the walls of the organ.

Further, the mass enters the stomach with thick muscular walls, rigid inside. Since ostriches do not have teeth, they swallow small pebbles in large quantities. Contracting, the walls of the stomach, together with the stones, “chew” food, which consists mainly of coarse fibers.

Then, in the small intestine, more than five meters long, the walls of the organ absorb useful substances from food. And in the paired processes of the caecum, the final breakdown of fiber and the release of water from food occur.
Due to this structure of the digestive system, ostriches can do without water for a long time, making up for its lack by absorbing moisture from food. The accumulation of undigested excesses occurs in the rectum and through the cloaca the intestines are released from them.

What does an ostrich eat in the wild?

African land is not the most fertile, so large birds have adapted in the absence of greenery to replace it with food of animal origin. Along with branches, roots and seeds, birds do not disdain insects, small reptiles, even turtles and mice.

Did you know? Under natural conditions, ostriches are friends with wildebeests and zebras. Flightless giants, thanks to their excellent eyesight, are the first to notice predators and raise the alarm. And zebras and antelopes with sharp hooves knock out insects for birds from the grass.

A very varied diet is supplemented with coarse sand and pebbles to facilitate digestion. An adult eats about five kilograms of food per day in order to have enough energy.

How to feed an adult ostrich at home

The diet depends on the season, you need to provide pets with vitamins and minerals, as well as the fiber they need all year round.

In summer

In summer, juicy food predominates:

• fresh;
• young and her tops;
• fruits;
• and vegetables.

The green menu must be supplemented with cereals - corn, barley, oats.

Important! Be sure to have a separate container with small pebbles or gravel.

in winter

In the cold season, food mainly consists of cereals and hay, vegetables and root crops that are stored for the winter, as well as grass flour, silage, and mineral and vitamin supplements.

The list of products include:

• cereals - wheat, millet, oats,;
• vegetables - , ;
• fruits - ;
• hay;
• bread and crackers;
• compound feed.

What not to feed

Ostriches are omnivorous, but there are foods that need to be given in a limited form, there are those that are prohibited.

List of unwanted products:

Foods that can be given in small amounts:

• cabbage;
• bran;
• flour.

Feeding systems

There are several bird diet systems, whichever one the owner chooses, you must always take into account the balance of nutrients.

intensive

The system assumes the keeping of birds in an aviary, the absence of walking on the pasture, which is replaced with chopped green fodder. Greens means fresh alfalfa, salads, rapeseed. The basis of the diet is feed up to three kilograms per day for each adult.

In addition, supplements:

• soybean and corn oil;
• fish flour;
• vitamin and mineral complexes.

Semi-intensive

This system implies conditions close to natural: the bird is constantly on the pasture and forages itself. Small amounts of concentrated mixtures are added to her green diet. In the first months of winter, breeding pets are supplemented with mixed feed. Since December, birds have been fed a kilogram of concentrate in granules, increasing consumption by March to three kilograms.

Important! Concentrated food is given only together with chopped forbs or other succulent food.

extensive

The bird is kept on pastures, foraging on its own, in the summer months this allows you to save on compound feed. Ostriches are fed in case of a rainy summer or too dry, when there is little succulent food. Bird concentrates are given only in winter.

Feeding the chicks

Babies need special care proper diet From the first days of life, future health depends, especially the formation of bone tissue in chicks. Newborn ostriches are not fed for three days: they have enough nutrients coming from the yolk sac.

Four-day pets are given carefully grated cottage cheese, chopped boiled egg, chopped green food, water. Green food is given in small quantities, but always fresh, not lethargic.

Teaching chicks to take food is not difficult: you need to sprinkle it on a flat surface and tap with your fingers. Toddlers will begin to copy the movement and learn to eat. Ostriches are given separate containers with sand so that they get used to filling the stomach with pebbles. In addition, the kids willingly bathe in it.
In the second week of life, you can begin to accustom the chicks to compound feed, first with crumbs, then in granules. Be sure to give juicy greens, almost unlimited, grated vegetables (pumpkin, carrots). It is advisable not to let them out to pasture for up to three weeks so that the chicks harden.

Ostriches are large, non-flying birds that have long legs and long necks that protrude from a round body. Ostriches are larger than any other bird in the world. The ostrich is the only bird that has two toes on each foot.

In the 18th century, ostriches were nearly driven to extinction by hunting because their feathers were very fashionable in women's clothing. But by the middle of the 19th century, people began to raise ostriches. This allowed farmers to simply pluck feathers from poultry without killing them.

On the farm, you can get to know ostriches very closely, see and also buy fresh meat or eggs.

What do ostriches eat in Africa?

In their native expanses of Africa, ostriches feed on almost everything: plants, roots, fruits, insects, lizards and small rodents. Small stones, sand and shellfish have been found in the stomach of the ostrich, which help to absorb food.

In our country, their diet consists mainly of roots, leaves and seeds, but ostriches will eat everything that is available. They also ingest sand and pebbles, which help them grind food in their stomach, a specialized muscular stomach. Because ostriches have this ability to grind food, they can eat things that other animals cannot digest.

On the farm, ostriches are fed with all kinds of grains: wheat, barley, corn, oats, millet, beans, peas. They also give ostriches different types herbs clover, nettle, etc. From vegetables, you can feed cabbage, carrots and beets. Ostriches, and especially ostriches, need to be fed with special feed and vitamins. Come to our farm and see for yourself what ostriches eat.

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